{ THE MIDNIGHTER
"I LOVE BEING ME." |
| THE BASICS!
FULL NAME: The Midnighter
NICKNAMES: Night's Bringer of War, Lucas Trent, Dave
AGE: Early 40s
DATE OF BIRTH: Maybe July 14, 1967 (but probably not)
PLACE OF BIRTH: Unknown (not Harmony, Indiana)
MARITAL STATUS: Married
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Homosexual
OCCUPATION: Member of the Authority
CURRENT RESIDENCE: The Carrier
FAMILY: Apollo (Husband), Jenny Quantum (Daughter)
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APPEARANCE!
Midnighter’s a tall guy, standing at around 6’5”, and weighing around 165 lbs. The weight is pretty much all muscle, as he’s constantly keeping himself in shape, through both working out and extensive fighting. He has brown eyes and naturally red hair, though it’s rare to see it red in canon. That’s because he likes to dye his hair, so it’s usually either a blonde or a light brown color. If hair dye isn’t available at the facility, his dark ginger locks will soon be seen by all—if he ever bothers to take off his cowl.
He can usually be found in his leather costume, the outfit he finds the most comfortable. The costume consists of a leather cowl, a black leather body suit with a white crescent moon insignia set in an upside down grey triangle on the chest, a black leather trench coat, leather gloves with spikes in the knuckles and boots. He wears a belt around his waist, but there’s nothing special about it (no insignia, no pouches, just a normal belt).
Other than that, Midnighter will wear damn near anything. Every time he’s seen out of costume in canon, he’s wearing a different style. He’s worn a white suit befitting a high-ranking Mafioso’s bodyguard (complete with bodyguard shades), a random biker outfit, a plain red shirt with jeans, and more. He doesn’t really view clothing as all that important, and short of being given a tutu or a dress or something to that nature will probably wear whatever is in front of him.
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PERSONALITY!
When one thinks of a superhero, a guy like Midnighter typically doesn’t come to mind. Sure, he’s a costumed, card-carrying superhero, but that’s where most similarities end. The Midnighter is a self-proclaimed asshole, a man who has a brain to mouth filter but often chooses not to use it, as saying what’s on his mind is usually most satisfying. He also doesn’t censor himself, and curse words are frequently found in his vocabulary.
More importantly, unlike his better known counterparts, he is not only quick to use violence, he revels in it. Midnighter is happiest when he has a room full of bad guys he can crush, slice, or break until their hearts stop beating. He’s also the team’s torture expert, knowing and having no inhibitions using several block ops torture techniques on anyone unfortunate enough to be captured by his team. If he’s in a situation where he can’t punch things, he’s been known to daydream about it to relieve his frustration about not being able actually to do it. That being said, he’s not one for violence for violence sake. Though he believes most things can be solved through violence, he isn’t one to start a brawl if the team is pursuing diplomatic ends.
For a man that thrives in violence and carnage, Midnighter has soft spot for children, and not just his adopted daughter, Jenny. He has a soft spot for any and all children. In one adventure where he was sent back in time to kill Hitler, he went out of his way to make some German children, brainwashed by the Hitler Youth culture, happy, even if that meant pretending to be a Nazi, something that didn’t sit too well with him. In another adventure, Midnighter went out of his way to locate a child’s lost kitten (sure it was a bet from Jack, but the bet only involved “do something for the everyday person” and not specifically children).
Also in contest with his violent nature, Midnighter is a family man, with a husband of over 10 years, and an adopted daughter, Jenny Quantum. Apollo and Midnighter had been together since their rebirth and had gone through so much together, and as a result Midnighter knows Apollo better than he knows himself. He knows when to help his husband and when to let his husband fight his own battles. Midnighter knows his husband will always have his back, and Apollo is the only person in the world he fully trusts. That isn’t to say the two haven’t had their spats and near break ups, but in the end their love for one another wins in the end.
With his own daughter, he’s not the perfect dad but he tries his best. He’s shown attempting (with varying degrees of success) to cut back on his cursing, and has foregone sex at least twice so he and his husband can comfort their frightened little girl. He sacrificed his teammates for a while to ensure his daughter’s safety when the Carrier was compromised by the G7 governments. Midnighter even goes so far as to cut himself off from his husband and daughter for three years because he believes that being away from them will save them from a dystopian future.
Something he doesn’t have respect for is authority figures (which is fairly ironic for a man in a group called “the Authority”). He finds politicians and world leaders to be villains actively working to destroy the world, and has a disdain for corporations for similar reasons. Midnighter doesn’t even seem to like police too much, most likely from his time living in alleyways prior to joining the Authority. Despite that, he does have respect for the everyday man: the blue collar worker struggling to support their families, children being used as laborers in third world countries, the little old lady crossing the street. And that’s why he’s a member of “the Authority”—because he strongly believes in the mission statement of building a better world. He genuinely wants a better world for everyone, and just thinks that people only need a push in the right direction to achieve it.
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BIOGRAPHY!
As far as the Midnighter is concerned, he has no family, no childhood, no legal name. That’s because it was all taken from him when he somehow got himself involved in a black ops group headed by Henry Bendix, the weatherman (or leader) of a UN sanctioned team called Stormwatch. Stormwatch was supposed to be created to watch over the superpowered threats on the planet and respond accordingly, but Bendix… well he only really cared about Bendix. So he formed this black ops team consisting of seven members, totally erased the lives they had prior to them joining the project, and then sent them off on a suicide mission. So how exactly Midnighter got involved in this project is just as much of a mystery as his real name.
Getting back to the mission—it was a disaster. Of the seven members only two, Midnighter and his eventual husband Apollo, survived. Unable to get back to Stormwatch and realizing that Bendix is fucking insane, the two went underground. For five years they lived on the streets of various cities, fighting corruption and trying to fight for a better world from the bottom up while dodging one of the most powerful men on Earth. At one point there was a close call—Bendix had them cornered in a –but their future leader, Jenny Sparks, helped them out and they were able to escape back into the darkness.
Around the turn of the century, Stormwatch fell apart thanks to this really crappy Alien (like the movie) crossover like 75% of the workforce dying, so the aforementioned Jenny Sparks decided to form her own team. Among those recruits were Apollo and Midnighter, then dating. Their first assignment put them up against a man of Bendix-propotioned crazy, Kaizen Gamorra, who was using clone suicide bombers to blast his symbol (three knots on a ring) into the world, effectively claiming it as his own. He got as far as two rings before the Authority stopped him. Midnighter was especially crucial in this plot, as he defeated Gamorra by dropping the Authority’s base, the Carrier, onto Gamorra’s county. It’s important to note that the Carrier is 50 miles long.
Though Midnighter was present for their second real mission--the near destruction of the world and the murder of God, he really didn’t do much there. However, at the climax of the battle against God, the clock struck midnight on the year 1999, and Jenny Sparks, a century baby, died and in her place, a baby in Singapore, Jenny Quantum, was born. Originally the group split caretaking duties of the infant, but eventually Midnighter and Apollo , and sought to formally adopt the baby after they got married.
However, the G7 nations were unhappy with the way the Authority oversight, and arranged to have the team taken out and replaced with a puppet Authority. Midnighter barely managed to escape with baby Jenny, and laid low until he could remove the new team from his home, which he did almost single-handedly with baby Jenny strapped to his back (because he's a badass like that). The old Authority took back control of their headquarters (the Carrier), and Apollo and Midnighter were finally wed, and formally adopted baby Jenny.
While not the perfect family, the three were happy until one day Jenny's birth mother, Michelle Leung, came forward and contested their adoption. Midnighter was especially displeased by the turn of events, acting especially angry and irritable on missions and nearly getting into a fight with his husband because he didn't want anyone to take his little girl away from him. It was soon revealed that Michelle Leung wasn't who she said she was--she was in fact Jenny Fractal, an "evil" twin of Jenny's raised to be an assassin by the Chinese government. The two Jenny's fought and Fractal killed Quantum in front of Midnighter. In order to save his little girl, Midnighter was forced into a position that will haunt him for the rest of his life--to save Quantum he had to kill Fractal in the cradle. Midnighter managed to tell the two apart and murdered the newborn, enabling Quantum to take over the present-day Fractal's body with the help of one of another Authority member.
A little while later, the United States government nearly caused an interplanetary incident, setting the members of the Authority over the edge and declared a coup over the incubant government. Midnighter, though originally for the plan, didn't the way leader Jack Hawksmoor was handling the situation. To make matters worse, Midnighter accidentally stumbled upon an alternate future where he met an older version of his husband. Apollo warned him that if he allowed the Authority to continue, the world would fall into chaos. Shaken by the events he saw, he promptly returned to his own time and forcibly broke up the team, relinquishing control of America back to the people.
For next three years Midnighter wandered the streets alone, purposefully distancing himself from the two people he cared about most to protect them from the future he had seen. However, the three were finally reunited when Jenny Quantum (who had magically aged herself to 15), dragged him back to the Carrier and reunited the group once more. It was then discovered that the future Midnighter had seen was an illusion orchestrated by Henry Bendix to remove the one obstacle in his path for world domination. Though Bendix originally overrode Midnighter's implants and used him as a puppet against the others, he eventually broke free with the help of Authority member Angie (the Engineer) and killed Bendix by ripping his head from his spine.
Sometime later, Midnighter eventually goes on a few adventures of his own, including going back in time and almost killing Hitler, and attempting to find the life he had before Bendix took it all away from him (to no avail). He and the rest of his team also met DC's Jason Todd, Donna Troy, and Kyle Rayner as the three travelled through alternate dimensions, had a collective dream with other members of the Wildstorm Universe involving various members of the DC Universe, and went alternate universe hopping when the Carrier's power source (a caged baby universe) crapped out. Otherwise Midnighter's been working on strengthening his relationship with Apollo and trying to connect with his teenage daughter.
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ABILITIES!
When the Midnighter was created by Henry Bendix, he was designed to be a master of combat. As a result, he has knowledge of various weapons ranging from shuriken to tanks, and keeps custom-shaped shuriken’s and forearm-sized battle staves on him at all times when in costume. Despite this, he’s primarily a hand-to-hand fighter, preferring to get up close and personal when he fights. He’s been shown going up against over 30 men and killing them all with ease.
Midnighter, when he wants to be, can also be quite stealthy. He’s been shown infiltrating, and was only “caught” when he wanted the enemy to see him. But typically he isn’t used for stealth purposes—he’s usually the one on the team to get their hands dirty. He knows multiple black ops interrogation techniques, and ways to horribly mutilate a man without killing him, and isn’t afraid to use any of them to get what he wants.
In addition to his natural skills, Midnighter has multiple implants designed to not only augment his body to superhuman levels, but to also grant him special abilities. The ability he uses the most often would be his battle precognition, which enables him to run through every possible battle scenario in a blink of an eye, and build a plan of attack around it. He’s also shown he can use that ability in reverse—pick an outcome and work backwards to achieve that outcome. Another implant allows him to see the abilities of those around him simply by looking at him.
The rest of his implants allow him to push his body past normal human limits—he has enhanced speed (though nothing compared to a speedster), strength (he can’t lift a car over his head, but he can tear a man apart with his bare hands), reflexes, and coordination. A different set of implants enable him to have a greater ability to take pain, to the extent where he is able to undergo major surgery wide awake.
His blood has healing properties enabling himself (and others through blood transfusions) to heal at a quicker rate. This healing factor will keep him from catching a cold or let AIDS stay in his system for longer than 6 weeks, but does not function that quickly in terms of physical injury. If Midnighter gets seriously injured (ex. breaks an arm, gets a hole blown into his chest), he will require medical attention and be out of commission for a few days. This healing factor also allows Midnighter to go for (at the very least) months on end without eating or using the facilities. Should anything happen to his original heart, he does have a second one in case of emergencies.
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